Documentaries & Co: "Hessens größte Adelsfamilien" by HR

Due to me being kind of MIA lately and not being able to a) visit castles or exhibitions to write about and b) not being able to dig up the time and leisure to write about all the other places I did indeed visit during the past year, I thought I'd introduce a new feature to the blog called Documentaries & Co to keep us somehow going. At hopefully not too large intervals, I will post documentaries or otherwise interesting videos I enjoyed watching. Not all of them will be about castles per se but will all deal with the subject of royal- and nobility in some way.

First up is a 90-minute documentary entitled "Hessens größte Adelsfamilien" - literally meaning Hesse's biggest noble families though actually meaning most important families - featuring a lot of families ranging from untitled nobility with a simple von or zu in their name to some of the formerly reigning houses. I know that the documentary is in German and this blog's language is in English. However, if you have a simple grasp of the language or simply enjoy looking at old castles, this one is for you. (You won't believe how many documentaries I have watched in languages I did not understand, just because I was interested in what was shown...)

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It's been almost a month since the last update on Confessions of a Castleholic and while the above picture might suggest otherwise (it's not a castle but the New Town Hall in Hanover, actually), I haven't been castle hunting for quite a few weeks now. Still, I wanted to give you a quick update to say that everything is fine. More than fine, actually: As some of you have already learned via any of my social media channels, I'm moving to Berlin later this month and so life has been pretty hectic and busy. But I'm looking forward to Berlin and discovering all the Prussian palaces surrounding it. In the meantime, castle hunting and blogging had to step back a little but I will be back with more castles later this year.

Today in Hanover, Hereditary Prince Ernst-August of Hanover married Ekaterina Malysheva. Here are some of the guests, in no particular order...
Margrave Max and Margravine Valerie of Baden, née Archduchess Valerie of Austria, with their son Prince Michael and his wife Princess Christina of Baden.
Count Friedrich of Ortenburg and his wife Countess Christine, née Baroness of Wangenheim, with their sons Max and Albert, who were two of the page boys.
Count Karl of Solms-Laubach and I presume one of his daughters.
Andrés and Lauren Santo Domingo.
Another picture of Andrés and Lauren Santo Domingo.
Prince Georg-Friedrich of Prussia and his wife Princess Sophie, née Princess of Isenburg.
Another picture of the couple.
Prince Heinrich of Hanover, uncle of the groom, his wife Princess Thyra, née von Westernhagen, and their sons Prince Albert and Prince Julius.
Another picture of Prince Heinrich and Princess Thyra of Hanover.
Prince Andreas and Princess Alexandra of Leiningen. She is a bo…

The death of Richard Fürst zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg earlier this week saw a surge in interest in my take on the (in)famous will of inheritance looming over the family. One point about the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg inheritance that many seem to find especially curious is the fact that the late Prince Richard never actually owned his family's fortune but that it was instead passed from his father - who went missing during World War 2 - to a yet unborn grandson - who was born in 1969 - (or anyone else, really, who would inherit after Prince Richard). The German nobility, however, isn't short of interesting inheritance constructions - case in point: The Thurn und Taxis inheritance.
The Thurn und Taxis family isn't just famous for their fabulous wealth, estimated at around $ 2.5 billion today - even though Princess Gloria of Thurn und Taxis says it less than a billion - but also for their lifestyle to go along with it. In fact, Princess Gloria of Thurn und Taxis may si…